ASUS’ “Bamboo” Laptop
There have been bamboo themed products in the past, but 2008 has seen the release of several products made using bamboo, a trend that is growing more popular for the eco-friendly conscious designers and consumers. The latest into production seems to be a bamboo notebook by ASUS. The benefits of using bamboo, other than being biodegradable are that it looks elegant and has a high tensile strength, making it a useful replacement for conventional materials.
More details here
Jia Wei’s View on Chinese Design
“Taking the Pulse of Chinese Design”
LKK Design’s founder, Jia Wei, gives an interesting take on the current status of the Chinese design industry in an interview with http://en.visionunion.com/ entitled “Taking the Pulse of Chinese Design”. Noticeable points he mentioned were; china needs its own style; more professionalism needed from the large number of Chinese designers; understanding of symbiotic design. He further explains that he believes China’s design style should be based on Chinese culture.
Here is an extract from the interview;
Here is an extract from the interview;
Q: How do you view the current state of Chinese design?
A: We’re not short of good designers in China, nor good design agencies and good clients. What we do lack is a systematic approach to design, a design process with a particular cultural basis. I’ve always believed that it’s the underlying economic foundation that determines what can be built. The current boom in the Chinese art market is a result of the expansion of the economy.
I am convinced we will soon be seeing a similar boom in Chinese design. The important thing for a designer is to be able to use economic, artistic, cultural and scientific methods to make design something three-dimensional. Design that only considers artistic or scientific aspects is not good design. So many designers now fail to use this three-dimensional approach when they design a product. They only consider aesthetic aspects and try to copy that clean European look. That is someone else’s creation and they’ve been developing the style for decades now. Even if we do design like that really well, that’s not being creative, it’s just continuing what’s gone before. We ought to be creating an age of three-dimensional design that is our own thing.
Read the rest of the interview here